Gariep Dam

development projects on Orange River

From the Gariep (formerly Hendrik Verwoerd) Dam the Orange swings to the northwest to its confluence with the Vaal River. The Vaal, which rises in Eastern Transvaal province, flows west through the major population and industrial core of South Africa before turning south and joining the Orange near the town of Douglas. The Orange then turns southwest and flows over calcrete and tillite (glacial...

...River Project was located farther upstream, between the Caledon and Vaal confluences. The plan consists of a number of dam and canal projects; work began in 1962. The completed projects include the Gariep Dam (1972), which has formed the Gariep Reservoir; the Van der Kloof (formerly P.K. le Roux) Dam (1977), about 90 miles downstream from the Gariep Dam; a tunnel some 50 miles long (1975),...

test for ground motion

...promise of future continued progress. It is now possible to calculate the response of a concrete dam to any specified ground motion; this has been done for the Tang-e Soleyman Dam in Iran and the Gariep Dam in South Africa.